Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

It’s been a while since my last guide video (a couple years, actually…) and I’ve been getting requests to update them. I figured HoT was a good reason to do so.

The first video is done – it covers the basics, so this is a perfect video for you if you are new or don’t know much about the profession. Future videos will have more detailed gameplay, discussing skills, traits and then explanations about how to play the class in an overall sense.

Find the video here:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

There are videos of the 1st raid boss completed where every person there was in zerk gear, including the Druid and they complete it fine. I’m sure the other bosses will be harder, but once everyone knows what is coming, they will be able to play glassy, it happens every time content is released and people get better at completing it and creating specific strategy for countering the mechanics.

The Sickest Guild cleared the instance with a Cleric’s Druid. Afterwards their druid even went on to reddit with his own video that he made advocating for Cleric’s gear over ‘zerker, even if the healing scaling wasn’t going to change.

What it boils down to for me is a case of it’s better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. Your raid won’t fail from you over healing the dps/tank. It will however fail if you under heal.

If your raid group only takes one dedicated healer I think generally you’ll see that player take a lot of healing power, most likely Cleric’s. There is of course always the possibility that teams figure out how to split the healing load between players so you may have 2 or 3 hybrids. I doubt we’ll see this though as typically in this game, in order to hybridize you give up much of what makes you good and useful.

Purecura you traitor!

And after that motivating rant about how much you love Mesmer! Muh heart can’t handle the stress.

Seems like a reasonable divide between the two. Druid heals also seem more focused as you have to aim them while revenant heals are area effects around the revenant.

Agreed. Going from unwanted to mandatory means that it will be “Druid or kick” for all group content. Rangers wanted a spec that would make us useful, instead we are going to be pigeonholed into a healer role that NO ONE HAS EVER ROLLED A RANGER TO PLAY.

0: Ranger
Requirements: Equip Bow, Press 1, and learn to activate autoattack
Ranger can afk through most leveling content thanks to the pet.

Easy: Warrior, Guardian
Requirements: Equip GS, Press 1, occasionally dodge and use utilities
Have lots of defense, warrior being easier due to more mobility and more passive defense both are still easy.

Medium: Engineer, Thief, Necro
Requirements: All of the previous things, learn a class mechanic and abuse it
Only hard until you learn some important feature of the class, then it becomes really easy. For example, when a thief learns to stealth and realize they can bypass most of the obstacles in this game, they become really easy, or when a necro learns to Death Shroud.

Hard: Mesmer, Elementalist
Requirements: Learn how the class works
These are the hardest because not only are the builds not complete until later levels, you actually have to realize what stuff like clones and attunement do and how they work. Basically, hardest to wing it.

The gift is a BIRTHDAY gift, not a game anniversary gift. Your own post says you created your character in November. Is it November yet? No. So no matter how much you have played your character, you still won’t get a birthday gift before that characters birthday.

Needs to reach the 1095 day point. use /age and see haow close.

Even if you had a character from November 2012, it still wouldn’t be 3 years because it’s currently August, not November.

Firelysm.4967:

It’s fun for you, and it’s nothing near fun to other people playing versus 20% unjustified damage where you can to easily apply conditions and not even get punished for it. You just apply condis on poor thing, then hide, while the target trying to find you, specially melee will die jsut by standing, and even faster by searching for u.

I’m not even sure which part of this I should start with. Playing versus 20% unjustified damage? Do me a favor and find me where that PU 20% damage modifier is. If you can find it, I bet all the PvE guys will love you forever.

Easily apply conditions without punishment? Sorry, you must have missed the memo. Clone death has been removed from the game. The only ways Mesmer has to apply high intensity conditions are the scepter skills and shatters, both of which are hardly without counterplay.

You apply conditions, then hide, and the target dies? You must be fighting the worst players in the game then! The vast majority of Mesmer condition pressure is hard-countered by standing still and using no skills. Normally that’s a bad idea, but if you just apply conditions then hide, that’s exactly what any even halfway decent player will do.

Firelysm.4967:

PU mesmers is number one on my favourite nerf list.
Next one is new “EAZ PZ SHATTER THIS” build.. where requires to press 3 buttons very quickly to make 14k damage. This is not how it should be, every class has insane cast time to make this happend, and then execution, mesmer can deal that damage within 2 second time lapse from casting to damage done, which includes also walking to the target.

Every class has insane cast time to make that happen? We must be playing different games then. To do a shatter that strong, you need to be point blank range with your target for mirror blade, then use that skill without it being mitigated, then shatter. Not the height of difficulty, but not exactly easy either.

Thief can do that much damage with a backstab and then hss. Warrior can do that much damage with a whirlwind followed by arcing slice. Alternatively, warrior could hit eviscerate and then auto a couple times. Engineer can do that in an instant with a static discharge build, ranger with rapid fire and pet hits during taunt, guardian…can do that with either power burst or their ridiculous instant 11 burn stacks combo, necromancer can do that much with a single close range life blast and procs, and Elementalist can easily match that with fresh air burst.

Every class has their own instakill burst combo. They take different forms and feels, but they all work quite effectively.

Firelysm.4967:

2ND on my favourite list is shatter nerf which can deal 22k damage on target with 3,3k ARMOR and 26k HP. Is this single rotation justified ? No.

I love this bit, because there’s so much wrong packed into such a tiny space. Let’s see here.

You’re complaining about how much damage burst does by saying that you can burst someone with a lot of health, completely forgetting (or more likely never understanding in the first place) that health has zero correlation to damage taken.

You’re claiming that a Mesmer can burst someone with 3.3k armor for 22k damage. Everything about that is pretty laughable, unless the target stands there, lets an iZerker hit them, hit them again, and then still eats the full burst combo that takes a lot of time and utilities to set up without dodging or moving or otherwise doing anything to mitigate the damage.

You’re under the impression that this is a ‘single rotation’, as if it could be repeated easily, when really it’s a complex combo requiring 9+ skills with large recharges all timed to land exactly at the right points in time without the target doing anything to avoid it.

Firelysm.4967:

Both PU and shatter hit way to hard,

I love how you’re referring to PU both as being distinct from shatter, and as something that does damage on its own. It’s worth a solid chuckle.

Firelysm.4967:

people say don’t exegerate but my friend yesterday outplayed 2v8, killed 3 and got away with Shatter mesmer, came back and killed the other 4 trying to ress those pore guys.

I’m fully willing to believe this happened. WvW is filled with uplevels and absolutely hilariously awful players. If you find the right mix, massively outnumbered fights are easily possible, especially on an aoe bursting build vs uplevels with very low defense.

Firelysm.4967:

Keep in mind they were all above silver, so those were not some bronze scrubs that just made virgin steps into WvW.

That’s adorable. You actually seem to think rank means something.

I also joined to engi bandwagon somewhat recently, but I’m a true multiclass main at heart.

With engineer theres a lot of different things you can do, and it honestly depends on the role you want. Grenades and Tool kit have been the staple kits on meta builds because they have the best offensive and defensive skills needed to do well in team fights. The elixer gun is a good weapon kit too, and its much stronger in 1v1s, which isn’t the focus of conquest, and it also needs alchemy to function. Bombs have some potential in more condition focused set ups, while I generally advice against flamethrower. The last utility should be something like slick shoes or elixer S.

So you want full condition engineer: you need rabid gear, pistol/x (although I prefer OH pistol now that burning is broken). For kits you pretty much need grenades, and then the other kit(s) depend on traitlines you take. If you go alchemy, take e-gun, if you take explosives, which is ideal with grenades, bombs is also good. Don’t underestimate slotting tool kit though because its really good at outplaying enemies and gives you a lot of options. Anyway grenades are needed because they’re AoE proc spam, which you’ll need to be efficient in team fights. Pistol/Pistol has amazing condition burst against single targets by contrast. Bombs have area denial and good condition pressure with shrapnel and the short fuse trait.

Also for condition, firearms is mandatory for incendiary powder and chemical rounds, which is pretty obvious, as well as the bleed on crit procs. Other than that balth runes, geomancy and torment/doom/energy sigils are good choices. So if you have explosives/firearms, you can do many things with the last traitline. I like inventions for bunker down and mecha legs and the heal turret reset, but its a bit more efficient in celestial, as is alechemy to an extent, which needs elixers/e-gun to be ideal. You could also go tools to counter thief teams but thats up to you.

Just keep in mind the weaknesses of rabid engi, namely other condition specs, so stay away from terrormancers and condition rangers, as condi ranger has more sustain than you and terrormancer can use your conditions and lack of cleanses to kill you, other than that its a pretty strong build, but will likely be weaker than celestial rifle.

For cele rifle explosives(grenadier, aim-assisted rocket, siege rounds), inventions(automated medical response, mecha legs, bunker down), alchemy(protection injection, backpack regenerator, throw stimulant or hgh maybe if you prefer elixir gun over slick shoes). Intel and energy sigils. Vampirism rune still pretty strong.

Not sure about condition but probably firearms(instead of explosions) with chemical rounds, pinpoint distribution, incendiary powder with balthazar runes and rabid amulet.

rabid stats, stack burning traits, runes, sigils.

dont expect it to last long though..

It does seem a bit confusing, I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around an organized guild build for WvW. So far Inventions makes a lot of sense from a support stand point, it seems to have plenty of group utility with water fields and what not. That’s about as far I can get, the rest doesn’t seem to gel, other classes like Ele for example have lines that compliment their support or damage capabilities, maybe it’s just me but it seems they missed the boat on Engi in this regard.

Then again maybe I am just missing something.

Let me try my best to explain why each of those builds do wonder agaisnt thieves in general. I don’t really care if I’m overdoing it, but I like to give the full thing (from me, as best as possible) as much as I can!

DISCLAIMER: Much of my arguement is still speculative and is subjected to correction. In other words, I don’t know much about mesmer vs thief gameplay.

Know that the core mechanic for thieves is to quickly take down enemies and then find some other poor lost soul for them to take out, Assassin’s Creed style. Essentially it’s why thieves have lots of good stealth, powerful bursts, and unique ways to dodge potentially fatal attacks from enemies. While this makes them formidable foes, they can’t stay in a prolonged fight. They are innately squishy and if the fight drags on (assuming no outside interruptions), the thief becomes vulnerable each moment.

From what I understood from my matches, thieves trump over Power Shatter mesmers because they can simply evade the frequent 10 second spike bursts. Not only that, but in this partcular fight, mesmers don’t have a lot of defense agaisnt a thief and this sentence is just the blurb of it. Thieves can infamously reset fights if they want to with their stealth and then come back to restart and win this time. A Power Shatter mesmer’s defense (shatter invulerability and 2 stealth skills) don’t amount enough for us to take them on at equal footing.

These builds help out to beat up thieves 1v1:

Prismatic Understanding Condition – Mesmers have stealth too! Only this time we get 60% chance of defensive boons and a buttload of stealth! In this build, a mesmer’s 3-4 stealth (max if taking Torch 4, Decoy, Veil (it’s the line stealth), and Mass Invisibility) is a significant amount to a thief’s 2 stealth skills. Even though one’s a healing/prolonged stealth utility skill for a thief, a mesmer can simply pop in and out of stealth while being defensive and inflicting conditions. And conditions are sustained damage attacks which the thieves can’t handle neatly. I’ll get to the sustained damage part later. The stealth isn’t the only defensive part for the PU Condi. Staff skills give Chaos Armor and the Scepter skills give defensive blocks. With these, you give no leeway for thieves to use their coup de grace.

Shatter Condition – Now with Maim the Disillusioned, we’ve become the masters of Torment. Thieves pride themselves in moving around the battlefield like a maniac. If we give them a condition that doubles the damage because they move, then their core mechanic is under threat. Unlike power shatter, where they rely on a single powerful burst, shatter effects are consistenly sustaining damage. Plus unlike power shatter, we gain block skills and an extra stealth skill to guard ourselves against them, assuming Scepter and Torch. The Staff skills help because they give out conditions and a good niche of Chaos Armor. It’s a more offensive version unlike the PU build, but an equally potent one.

Lockdown – If a thief can’t do anything, it’s a sucky thief. And this is what our lockdown has an advantage against thieves in general. We have 5 lockdown skills: 2 from our weapon sets, 2 from our mantra, and 1 from our shatter. That’s more than enough for us to interrupt the thief and make them truly vulnerable. Our best defense against bursty thief, in this particular build, is also a full on offense. If one traits Chaotic Interruption, we not only root them but give out another condtion where they can’t maneuver much. With these, they become sitting ducks if they’re not careful. What not better way to do than to make sure that their skill sets useless like fish?

Power Phantasm – The classic phantasm and the reason I love using this build against thieves. This is the reciprocal to the Power Shatter, but our ‘burst’ damage comes from our phantasms. The key tactic to a phantasm user is to let our phantasms do the work and we just fend for themselves. A ‘Pure Phantasm’ build, which has Sword+Sword/Scepter+Pistol, has the two most powerful phantasms in the mesmer kitten nal, 2 blocks from each weapon set, and other fun utilities that we can use to counterattack. A ‘Offensive Version’ helps as the phantasms do damage and we can dodge roll/stealth whatever we want. If the thief attempts to restart the fight, the phantasms will be there waiting.

If I didn’t explain well, I understand. Much of it’s a summarized blurb of why these things are good against thieves.

I always wanted to show my true nature.

Someone needs to make the title into a bumper sticker, like those honor student ones you see all the time.

The most supportive build for pve not including hammer ( because it has flaws for dungeons) is 4/5/0/0/5, berserker gear, sword/focus/greatsword. For fractals and hard bosses where aegis are not a 100% damage reduction outside of speedruns, hammer 3/3/0/4/4 gives the same support as the first build, coupled with a permanent protection uptime.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Surviving and going through the content as a guardian isn’t hard, but giving proper support and playing with a team takes some time getting used to.

Most likely it’s more NCsoft than ANet regarding the new leveling system and trying to keep new players roped in. Since the publisher has the final say with what goes where in terms of their cash flow.

The illusionist/trickster class is hard to fight? I wonder if this is intended…

Mesmers sound very impressive when we hear things like manipulation, portals, illusions, etc. But it is really only so very impressive if look at them from an aspect of “no limits”. But we know that they do have limits. e.g.: it’s harder to create an illusion in one mind than an illusion that everyone can see.

Now I also think that not all mesmers are created equal. For example, staff Mesmer may excel at portals, but won’t neccesarily have the same types of tricks that a sword and pistol wielder would. Duelist health is also more of a mechanic I think since peope are born big or small without reguard for what they will become. Now excersize may play a small role but one bullet kills big men as well as small. So going back to the wepaons wielded, mesmers who weild staves may not get as much excersizre as those who wield swords.

I think ypou covered the mesmers abilities pretty well ,so Ill list ele’s. Looking at ele advantages, it isn’t all destructive power. if they are tricked into hurting themselves, they can repair the damage with healing water power. if they are surrounded by clones, electricity works well in AoE to neutralize that strategy. Eles real strength lies in their options and adaptability. They can strengthen themselves with the power of earth, heal with water, quicken themselves with air and damage with fire.

The more fit ele’s may wield daggers since that weapon set seems to require a lot of activity. They can summon powerful elemantals to also create multiple avenues of attack that the Mesmer would need to keep track of. And they are much more durable than clones.

All in all, it really does depend on what style and types of spells each combatant leans towards and how they respond to each other. I’m not usually one to say “it depends” because I like to focus on tendancies, but in this case, I really do think so. there are just so many vaiables to take into account. And they both have so many counters to each others potential strategy.